[merged] ExpandedFactions 0.2.1 for FE 0.86

Sounds like a plan!

The first faction I've been working on is the Living Stone faction.

The Living Stone faction was created in the cataclysm from an exploding fire shard underground.

The living stone has the following bonuses:

Strategic bonus: Shifting Maze - May build a single Shifting Maze improvement per game. Where the heart of the Living Stone beats the strongest, their mastery of the surrounding terrain knows few limits. The ground is constantly changing, and many who would come to do them harm find themselves lost in the shifting maze. The Maze is a defensive structure that teleports away one random unit from any attacking army. In addition, in the one city this is built, the terrain counts as Hills as well as City.

Tactical bonus: Made of Stone - All city-trained units gain 80% health and lose 30% initiative. They also gain 33% resistance to fire. Militia does not count as city-trained.

In addition to Horses and Wargs, the Living Stone may also ride a domesticated race of Umberdroth mounts. Umberdroth mounts are slower than horses, but provide superior defense. Their domestication has reduced them from ferocious beasts to "workhorses", they are much smaller than the wild Umberdroths.

The following traits will be available for the Living Stone, and any custom faction designed with their racetype:

Fireborn - Ignore another 33% of fire damage. Costs 2 mana per unit member.

Living Metal - Adds 6 weight. When struck in combat, has a 33% chance to gain 75% defense until its next turn. Does not stack. Costs 1 mana and 3 metal per member. If the unit also has the trait Halfbreed, the defense bonus is reduced to 33%.

Half-breed - A Living Stone unit trained with this trait will not gain the usual 80% hitpoints and lose 30% initiative. Instead, the unit will gain 40% hitpoints and lose 10% initiative. This trait is only available for factions with the Made of Stone bonus.

Hillfighter - When this unit is occupying a Mountainside or Hills tile, it gains +20% damage, +2 dodge and +5 ranged dodge

Umberdroth Bond - As long as this unit is riding an Umberdroth mount, this unit will ignore 33% of all blunt melee damage.

Living Stone militia all have the Fireborn trait. They favour shields over spears or two-handed weapons. Level 5 cities do not gain another militia squad, but gain an Earth Elemental instead.

Balancing thoughts: The Living Stone are supposed to be the toughest units in the game, and they only grow stronger in that area as the game progresses. In addition, their resistance to fire makes them difficult to fight with traditional means. Their weakness is their slow pace. To fight the Living Stone, your best bet is fast fighters and Air or Water magic.

So you plan on making these factions that use the base improvements and techs of their basic races?

I love what you do and have done with this. A few suggestions based off that list:

1 Shadows seem more Empire than Kingdom

2 If you get rid of Angels also get rid of Demons from Empires

3 How are Living Stone and Golems different? Isn't a stone golem "living"? It is not that I dislike Living Stone, but if you remove Shadows from Kingdom then you could have:

-Gnomes, Elves, Living Stone for Kingdoms; having Angels and (unnamed extra resource unit) as recruitable resources for Kingdom factions.

-Drota, Greenskin, Undead; having Demons and Shadows as recruitable resources for Empire factions.

-Frost Giants recruitable for both Kingdom and Empire?

I'd love to assist you with ideas if you'd want.

*edit spelling*

So can we have one trait recognize another trait and apply a bonus or penalty? I notice that Half-Breed interacts with Living Metal to give a penalty. I would like my Beastmasters to increase the power of any creature in my army. Could I perhaps make a trait, Mark of the Beast, that confers a bonus when a Beastmaster is present in the army? He would have a trait, Beastmaster 1-5. I want it to give every unit with Mark of the Beast a bonus to Init and Dodge. 

I would first think to have the Mark of the Beast trait recognize the Beastmaster trait. If not that, I would have the Beastmaster trait give Call of the Beastmaster to every unit, and that trait would be able to interact with Mark of the Beast to give the bonus. The third option would be to have Beastmaster 1-5 give the bonus to all units in the army, but that would give non creature units an illogical advantage. 

Have you though much about how Stone Heroes might function? I would love to have them in the game. It would be like in The Neverending Story!

Such situations are very complex to explain.

There are two main scenarios.

The first one is this: a modifier can recognize any unitstat when performing either an attack or performing a defensive action and react to that. So, I can have a spear with this modifier:

          <GameModifier>
                <ModType>Unit</ModType>
                <Attribute>AdjustUnitStat</Attribute>
                <StrVal>UnitStat_Attack_Pierce</StrVal>
                <StrVal2>UnitStat_FLAG_ISMOUNTED</StrVal2>
                <Multiplier>1.20</Multiplier>
                <vsHigher>1</vsHigher>
            </GameModifier>

In this scenario, a weapon with this modifier would do 20% extra piercing damage against any mounted unit, unless the one wielding the spear is mounted as well.

These sorts of modifiers can be called when one unit is performing any type of attack on another hostile unit. That means Ranged attacks, Melee special abilities, melee attacks, and Spells. They also trigger from defense, and counter-attacks. So I could have a modifier in the spear that gives me +50% dodge against mounted units (unless mounted itself):

          <GameModifier>
                <ModType>Unit</ModType>
                <Attribute>AdjustUnitStat</Attribute>
                <StrVal>UnitStat_Dodge</StrVal>
                <StrVal2>UnitStat_FLAG_ISMOUNTED</StrVal2>
                <Multiplier>1.50</Multiplier>
                <vsHigher>1</vsHigher>
            </GameModifier>

The second one is actually a hidden stat that is called when a spell is triggered, from within the <Calculate> tags in the spells. In the above scenario, the Living Metal trait gives a proc chance for a spell to go off. But, inside the spell modifier is ALSO a reference to a unitstat gained from the Halfbreed trait. Thus, I am able to have one trait affect another through the use of spells.

1. Shadows aren't naturally evil, how do you think you are able to survive?  Their origin story will show them as basically enslaved until set free. The fundamental difference between kingdom and empire is not good vs evil. Kingdom = freedom, make your own destiny.Empire = Forced labour, sacrifice for greater good.

2. I'm definitely keeping the demons, they have an interesting mechanic lined up. Angels I have nothing for. We will see!

3. Living Stone is stoneflesh, a golem is a mechanical and magical construct. Golems are alive as their story will show, but they are still mechanical in nature. Think of them as AI.

I want more factions, not less! Why would I move those to be recruitables?

@seanw3 I am not familiar with stone heroes in the neverending story. Can you enlighten me? Other than that, each faction will have 3 or so champions join the regular pool of champions.

edit: seanw3 I'm quoting you again because I sort of ignored your post.

If I understand you correctly, you have army units that have a trait that marks them as special somehow. I'm going to make my own example just so we are on the page. Your army units have a Believer trait. You also have a Priest that gives "Bless". When this priest is in the army, you want Bless to interact with the Believer trait to improve their strength.

If that is correct, then that is possible, yes. You can use this modifier inside the Priest trait

 <GameModifier>
                <ModType>Unit</ModType>
                <Attribute>BattleAutoCastSpell</Attribute>
                <StrVal>Bless</StrVal>
                <Value>100</Value>
            </GameModifier>

The Bless spell will then use calculate tags to be affected by the Believer trait. So you can have a Believer in a Priest army gain +3 str from Blessed, and you can have a non-Believer gain nothing, or something else.

Of course, the AI will not understand these complications, so you must keep it very simple. Think of the AI as something that randomizes stuff. It should be possible to get right just by rolling the dice. In my traits above, I must imagine 3 scenarios:

1) Unit has Halfbreed

2) Unit has Living Metal

3) Unit has Halfbreed AND Living metal

In all these cases, the traits are still good. But without Living Metal interacting with Halfbreed in c), that would be an overpowered combination. So, basically, build complications in such a way that it is impossible to get wrong.

Ok, so now I'll camp here and I'll wait.

I'll just wait, I say. 

Good to hear! 

I want to make the Beastmaster Path easy for the AI. I plan to make it so that if the AI builds an Ivory Tower, and goes the route of Beastmaster, every beast that is trained will get bonuses that summoned units and minor minions do not. This is how I will do it, thanks. Now that I know how it works, I can issue different trait pairs for specific units. Back to the Tower to think!

Yes, same improvements, same techs. I won't remove anything, but I may add some things (like mounts, traits, items). It is crucial that the mod work with other mods. And for that to happen, I can use no odd special lists of improvements or particular branches of techs.

In all honesty, to me, Freedom = good and forced labor = evil... guess that's a politics thing.

Usually when more factions are introduced there is more homogeneity and less originality, as you have only a certain amount of unique mechanics to work with. I understand wanting to have as many as possible, but as you said, since they will use all the same base improvements and techs, how different are they really?

As for the golems vs living stone, iirc you used the golem models for the units, no? The aesthetic difference is what I meant more, players distinguishing things from each other.

It is your mod, not mine, so you will do with it as you see fit and I commend you on your efforts. I thought the Elves were awesome, they felt truly unique in WOM, so I can only imagine what you could do with them now that they can actually have unique traits.

Gnomes! Whoo hoo!!

I think that is backwards. The devs have said multiple times that the empire factions have greater internal mobility. In the Empires individuals tend to rise depending on their potential. However their is no protection for the weakest members of society. The Kingdoms are ruled by nobility, and while the nobility protects the peasantry if you are a peasant there is no way to become a noble. The kingdoms effectively have a caste system. Thus it is the empire where people are freer, however it is a Darwinist freedom where the strong rule the weak. In the kingdoms the people trade freedom and political power in exchange for safety, or as you said the greater good of society.

I am planning on working on modding a new race(not faction) into the game. Was thinking of calling them Outsiders, and they would be made up of dimensional travelers like demons and the titans were. I think that would fit nicely into the story. I have been making a comprehensive list of what it would take to make the race and I'm pretty sure I could do it. I have experimenting with gimp in order to make icons and I have a lot of experience with the tile creator, so unique buildings should be no problem. FE and WoM have tons of extra and unused equipment and art I can give them. Hardest part would be the unique magic book and just filling in all the lore. My goal would be to get them up to the same quality as the main races eventually. Anyway I am bringing this up because it seems like some of your Expanded Factions like Demons and Shadows would be be a great fit. The one area I have no experience with is modeling and skinning. So when I get this mod up to a certain point would love to be able to use your art or work with you.

Sounds neat, you're free to use any art and work with me. However... If you want it to be a part of this specific mod, I would have to insist that the tech and improvements remain practically the same. It is a goal of the mod to be modular with other mods. I set that goal from the start because I saw first hand how much trouble a unique tech and improvement list caused for Elves and Angels in E:wom. A few extra improvements or a few extra techs would work, but after some point it becomes incompatible with other releases.

Edit: By the way, me and seanw3 are also working on a massive summoner's mod. There's going to be a lot of spirits and demons featured in that. But it won't be done until we're practically at release, because we need the mod tools and the final balance of the main game.

Sounds great. ^^

I especially like Gnomes. Badger riders.

I also like the idea of having a heavenly faction like Angels. That or a priestly, do goody, holy faction.

You're gonna use a lot of the art assets from the WoM mod, I imagine. That's good, means this is a good way to completion already.

Yes, I'm using the assets, but I'm doing a more thorough job this time around with the mod. They also added many new complications that are both roadblocks and opportunities, if you compare xml e:wom to FE.

A rough estimate of the current status of this mod:

concepts: 33% done. I have a vague idea for the factions, but most bonuses, traits, backgrounds and champions aren't done

implementation: I'd say I'm about 60% done with the living stone. I need to make a lot of tiles for the shifting maze improvement, and we don't have access to mod tools. I also need to write diplomacy conversations for them, which I'm holding off on in case they alter the diplomacy system. The diplomacy system has about 5 different responses, and you can tailor them individually to specific factions. With this mod there should be around 20 factions in the game, so that's ~100 strings of text just for this faction. I also need to come up with some unique champions for the faction to go into the general pool. And those guys will need a set of traits unique to those champions as well (and any living stone sovereign).

The other factions are around 10%, if you include the art assets. They don't have a single xml file yet.

Just to clear up the plans for the Undead. I plan on making them fully compatible with Heavenfall's other races for the mod so that eventually they can be incorporated into his Expanded Factions. This way when I'm done with pretty much everything I want to do Heavenfall will take over custodianship of them with his mod. I also don't see the need to not use the excellent work he's done already. Besides that, my personal specialization is mainly in creating art assets. I'm Very limited on what I can do as a coder and not nearly as skilled as he is in that department.

Edit Note: As far as the goals for them, they're the same as Heavenfall's stated goals above.

The second faction is the Greenskin faction.

Greenskin are mostly cavedwellers, but occasionally they band together to form warbands that last only as long as their leader survives in combat. They used to pose no threat to any civilized faction, since you could disperse the warband by assassinating the leader. Their most recent leader is, of course, an immortal channeller, which complicates things.

The Greenskin have the following bonuses:

Strategic bonus: Never die, multiply - Greenskin pioneers cost 40% less production than normal. In addition, Greenskin start with an army size already increased to 9. Greenskin cities produce 1 less grain.

Tactical bonus: Greenskin - Greenskin consist of two archetypes - goblins and orcs. For each orc you have trained that remains active, you may train a goblin. Goblins cost no resources to train, cost no wages, and finish training quickly. They are exceptionally weak soldiers. Any time an orc performs an attack in tactical combat, all adjacent (friendly) goblin units have their next attack increased by 20%, and adjacent orc units gain 10% (does not stack). Any time a goblin performs an attack in tactical combat, there is a 25% chance that it will also attack itself due to Infighting. (edit: goblins do not gain level-ups, and they are worth practically no experience if you kill them)

In addition to Horses and Wargs, the Greenskin may ride Drakes. Drakes perform an additional attack when their riders attack in melee.

The following traits will be available for the Greenskin, and any custom faction designed with their racetype:

Outnumbered - As long as this unit outnumbers its enemy, this unit gains 3 accuracy and will ignore 10% of defenses. This applies to ALL enemies, including champions and monsters. In addition, if all attacks are Dodged, this unit may re-roll all its attacks ONCE if it outnumbers the target.

Spirit of the Greenskin - All units in the army gain +1 spell resistance

Discipline - When any unit has this trait, all goblins in the same army will have their Infighting damage to self reduced by 50%. This stacks twice. (mod note: greenskin sov has this trait as well)

Hot Blood - When this unit gains the attack bonus from an adjacent orc, that bonus is increased by 10%. This trait may be chosen both by goblins and orcs.

Swamp Fighter - When this unit is attacking an enemy unit which occupied a Swamp tile on the strategic map, this unit gains +10 accuracy.

Drake Bond - As long as this unit is riding a Drake mount, this unit will ignore 15% of enemy defense when attacking

For the greenskin, their basic militia is replaced by an extra-large goblin unit. This affects city level 1, level 2 and any city with a belltower. Other militia are "normal" orcs.

Balancing thoughts: This is the Strength in Numbers faction of your choice. Goblins and orcs reinforce each others' strengths. There is also the option of creating free goblin armies without any orcs, and sending them off to raid. When fighting against Greenskin, you must identify what units are key in tactical combat - what orcs are close to other greenskin and giving them bonuses? Who has the Discipline trait? Are the goblins stopping all your magic because they have the Spirit of the Greenskin trait?

Greenskin are at their best in the early and middle game due to rapid expansion and free troops. However, they are very weak to all area-of-effect magic. A greenskin faction is a threat to all others, and must be stopped in its track before it has a chance to grow momentum and become unstoppable.

Heavenfall: Making the game how it should've been made in the first place.

Nah, they just have a vision they're going with. And I have mine.

I vote to keep angels!  Seriously though, I love your work and I am thrilled to see you continuing it with FE.

I never downloaded your mods before because I disliked the mechanics of WoM so much I didn't think any amount of modding could make it interesting... This though I will definitely be trying out.

The thing about angels is... what do they DO? They mostly go around making proclamations, have auras of holiness, and fly. So my current idea is to have the Angels as the most diplomatic faction with the most growth. In tactical combat, they would be able to use their wings to make offensive jumps, like thunderstrike. But to me, those ideas sound absolutely shit compared to what I have for the other factions.

I need something that makes angels fun to play, and fun to play against.

I also considered making them have free movement on the tactical map, like they do in Dom3. But I already have that trait pegged down for the Shadows faction.

In E:wom they could move across water and mountains in strategic mode. But that wouldn't work in FE.